Best thing you can do with these systems is to find a Voodoo 3 card and use that. AGP is too buggy to be stable on those boards and Voodoo 3 cards seem to work better than most or you can just use a PCI card, which many people do. Back then there were still good options for PCI video that weren't horrendously slow compared to AGP. A GeForce 4 MX in PCI, for example, was no worse off than the same card in AGP form. Overclocking the AGP slot was also usually a no go on slot A motherboards without causing instability. BTW, do you have 3 or 4 RAM slots on your board? Boards with 4 RAM slots also tend to be unstable when all 4 slots are populated, that's why most of them only have 3, unless it's an OEM board, and then most of them have only 2. 😵

Yeah, the chipset isn't ideal especially if you have an earlier stepping but with later drivers and BIOS problems should mostly be solved.
What OS and chipset driver version are you using?

Yes, my voodoo3 works in the AGP slot but it and the G450 are the only cards that work reliably. It's perfectly fine but I just feel limited in what I can play around with. I tested with a Radeon 9250 PCI which I forgot to mention and that also works perfectly. No overclocking the AGP slot for me, as a matter of fact no overclocking at all is supported here. The board has 3 RAM slots, all of which I've populated. I assume replacing the capacitors won't do anything in this case then?

EDIT: I'm using Windows 98 SE with the unofficial service pack installed and the latest chipset/agp drivers, I'll post their exact version a bit later when I get to the PC in question. I'm using the V1.5 BIOS from MSI's website, which is the newest for this motherboard, dated 29/12/1999. I don't have the Super Bypass memory thing sadly.

It's likely one of those cases where all fixes didn't help.
You could try forcing AGP 1x if BIOS or the drivers allow you to.
Capacitors are unlikely the cause ot this kind of erratc behaviour even though I would never completely rule them out.

Edit:

Mizar wrote:

I'm using the V1.5 BIOS from MSI's website, which is the newest for this motherboard, dated 29/12/1999. I don't have the Super Bypass memory thing sadly.

Definitely an older stepping so maybe this is really one if those cases that doesn't have a fix.

It's actually fixed to AGP 1X by the nVidia drivers, I've tried running it at AGP 2X and it's much more unstable there, to the degree of crashing if left to sit idle in the desktop.

This is an old thread but just hits my situation perfectly. Same mobo, 750MHz Athlon (512KB) and only card I can get this to windows desktop is Voodoo 3 😂

It's just unbelievable how crap this mobo is. But, 2 ISA-slots! So Voodoo 3 it is.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-ms-6167-ir1

I'm curious to know what is your bios version. Could you post a high res pic of the board?
Thanks

It's a hit or miss with slot a/socket a. For me the first really usable chipset is nforce 2, stability wise. The first nforce had it's share of problems too.

sliderider wrote on 2019-10-30, 17:53:

Best thing you can do with these systems is to find a Voodoo 3 card and use that. AGP is too buggy to be stable on those boards and Voodoo 3 cards seem to work better than most or you can just use a PCI card, which many people do. Back then there were still good options for PCI video that weren't horrendously slow compared to AGP. A GeForce 4 MX in PCI, for example, was no worse off than the same card in AGP form. Overclocking the AGP slot was also usually a no go on slot A motherboards without causing instability. BTW, do you have 3 or 4 RAM slots on your board? Boards with 4 RAM slots also tend to be unstable when all 4 slots are populated, that's why most of them only have 3, unless it's an OEM board, and then most of them have only 2. 😵

....what? On slot A? Well that isn't my experience at all. So far I own an Asus K7V (KX133), a couple of MSI's (MS-6195 and a MS-6167) and an ECS K7ASA. All 3 are perfectly happy with any AGP card I put in the slot. So far I've tested with a Geforce 2 MX, Geforce 256 SDR, Voodoo 3 3000, a Geforce 4 MX440, a Geforce 3 Ti200, a Radeon 9100, a Radeon 9000 PRO and a Geforce 4 Ti4200, and none presented any issues.

I suggest OP try another power supply, and if that fails consider a full recap. My MSI MS-6167 (same as OP) suffered from a bad VRM, and only worked for 2-3 days with no stability issues whatsoever or other signs it might be failing, then stopped posting. After a full recap and a replacement MOSFET taken from a dead early socket A motherboard, it's also back in action and perfectly stable. The Asus K7V is a bit finniky, but not with video cards, since the issue persists with a PCI display adapter as well - it's really picky about ram - sometimes it's fine for weeks, other times I need to re-seat the ream after it's been off for a while, and sometimes it refuses to post with what it had previously worked fine before, requiring me to replace the ram (ram witch tested fine in other machines).

Oh, and I have another MS-6167 witch let out magic smoke from one of the copper coils near the CPU slot. It got so hot it changed color. I suspect it has the same issue, dead mosfet.

Socket3 wrote on 2024-03-01, 13:30:

I suggest OP try another power supply, and if that fails consider a full recap.

I second this suggestion.

It seems that many people in the retro community are still unaware of the bad cap plague (be it on the motherboard or in the PSU) and crappy PSUs.
A good deal of the retro hardware I've collected over the years has needed new (good quality Japanese) capacitors.

That said, for anyone reading this and planning on a recap - don't waste your time and get crap no-name caps on Amazon. Ali and Ebay are in a similar boat, though there are some sellers on there that do sell genuine good quality capacitors. And local markets/shops will almost never have these kind of specialized parts, so don't go looking there either.

As for the topic at hand...
I have one slot A computer - a Gateway Select with 750 MHz Athlon and universal AGP slot (I think.)
I've put numerous different GPUs in it, and it's always worked OK.
Tested the following: Radeon 7000, 7200, 9200SE, 9800 XT... and probably a few more that I forget now. No issues and 100% stable with all of these.

It's been a few years, but I recall seeing other posts around the interwebs of people having similar AGP issues, and I would swear it was that same chipset.

I ran a Slot A/AGP system for years as my "retro gaming rig", and it worked flawlessly, but it was a different board and chipset.

AOpen AK-72, AMD Athlon K770 700MHz CPU, AMD X850 Pro AGP GPU, all running on Windows 95 OSR 2.5. Loved that build, wish I still had it.

Still, I would also echo the suggestion to try a different PSU and do a recap as power delivery issues can cause the same problems.